“We grew up in an environment that we changed and shaped for good.”
My father was born in 1976 (1355 H.S.) in Kenjeka, a village in northeast Afghanistan’s Khash district of Badakhshan province. Life there wasn’t easy—“not developed,” as he humbly described it—but it was full of meaning.
“Before school,” he told me, “we woke up at 4 a.m., worked on the land—cutting wheat, collecting firewood, gathering greenery. Then we’d go to school by 7:30. When we came home, we went back to the fields.”
Farming wasn’t optional. It was survival. “We couldn’t live without agriculture,” he said. “It was part of us.”
He says they planted 80–85% of the trees around their home. “We relied on our own hands, our own crops,” he said. “We served the land, and the land served us.”
His favorite seasons were spring and summer—“That’s when flowers bloomed—roses, sadbarg, nazboo, jerivan. And the fruit trees—peach, apple—I loved those the most.”
He didn’t study agriculture in school—he lived it. “We learned by doing,” he said. “I followed my father, just as he followed his. We learned which soil fits which plant. You can’t grow potatoes in sandy soil—I didn’t read that in a book. I lived it.”
For him, touching soil and water was never strange or dirty—it was natural. “We are born from the soil,” he says, “and we’ll return to it.”